OPEN LETTER ABOUT YO LA TENGO Hey up, lass. You've missed a lot of music, as well as everything else, or maybe in addition to everything else you and I have missed. That Lucky Pierre album came out last summer; you would have loved that. The Streets - you would immediately have seen the kinship with Arab Strap. We Love Life, of course. Still can't find "Night Owl" by Bobby Paris. It's on Cameo Parkway, which bloody Allen Klein owns, and he won't reissue or license anything, not even "96 Tears." So much else. Meanwhile Back In Communist Russia have now had two albums out. And there was a Ballboy album. The new Arab Strap''s out next week. All this stuff I can't bring myself to listen to. Not by myself. Would we even have had time for music? Probably not, with everything else we had planned. And now the new Yo La Tengo's out. Summer Sun. Oh God you would have liked this. Mellow but quietly playful and finally profound; an entirely logical follow-up to And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out. "Night Falls On Hoboken" - that suspended, not quite quiet, landscape. And here, on the new one, we have an opening track called "Beach Party Tonight," but this is the same beach as Neil Young or Nevil Shute, or even Chris Rea. Indistinct, never quite graspable, but it's lovely. It's lovely in the way that the Manitoba album isn't. Who Manitoba? Oh you're missing nothing there - someone who uses all the same ingredients as Yo La Tengo, but doesn't, as yet, have anything to say with them. Jigsaw puzzle music, like a Mr Byrite reproduction of "Private Psychedelic Reel" with the obligatory dog barking noises and irritating squeaky gate sax. There are improv players present on Summer Sun but they merge into the needs of the music, rather than scream their lungs out over the top of the music. Roy Campbell Jr and Deniel Carter are there, but sometimes hardly there. William Parker's double bass blends very effectively with James McNew's electric bass to produce a duality somewhere between Astral Weeks and Laughing Stock. Not forgetting New Order. "Little Eyes" gives us Stereolab stripped of all the tiresome Wire/Intoxica! kitsch - it sounds so effortless that it's not an effort to listen to it. "Nothing But You And Me" is an extraordinary torch ballad which gradually becomes more and more touched by what sounds like a grand piano falling down a lift shaft, and various other unspecifiable electronic noises (and through it all, Ira Kaplan's demonstrably undemonstrative voice singing "Wake up honey/Won't you come back to me" HOW DID HE KNOW?), before Kaplan's guitar takes flight at the fadeout, with great Terje Rypdal swoops and tonalities. "Season Of The Shark" is a poisonously bouncy indie song worthy of C86 as it should have been. "Today Is The Day" welds great gulfs of bass with faraway vocals and Frisell-esque guitars (Kaplan, in the past a noise guitarist worthy to dwell alongside Sonny Sharrock and Stefan Jaworzyn, now ssems to be conjuring up the spirit of mid-'70s - i.e. good - ECM). "Tiny Birds" just echoes forever, its pizzicato strings detonating throughout; worthy of Cat Power. "How To Make A Baby Elephant Float" is weirdly reminiscent of "Postcard" by Neil Innes (remember how well Innes fitted in with YLT at their RFH gig?). And how good YLT can be when they're playful - the innocent breakbeat fun of "Georgia Vs. Yo La Tengo" recalls early, i.e. interesting, Luscious Jackson. "Don't Have To Be So Sad" is an exercise in self-laceration ("If you're looking at me/I'll try to be what you want to see") but with its backward drum track and its slippery, ghostly mirage of horns well back in the mix, you feel as though you're being kissed. How long it is since I've felt that, as well you know. Meanwhile, "Winter A-Go-Go" represents the best deployments of ska in non-reggae/hip hop/R&B/garage music since the bloody Specials, if I'm not over-exaggerating, and you know I regularly do. Terrific pop? Martha and the Muffins? Well well well...and how about "Moonrock Mambo"? More breakbeats, and an acute lyric which manages to namecheck the Mister Men, Don Cheadle and Steve Coogan - not to mention "like Jefferson Airplane, except on Grunt" - with the payoff "I want to be next to you" (a deracinated Rose Royce/Temptations?) and an immeasurably sad backing vocals/vibes descending lament of a motif crossing over the otherwise gleeful music. Why can't Mercury Rev do this sort of thing any more? They should stop trying so hard. Yes I know, so should I. The 10-minute "Let's Be Still" is to my mind - and I'm sure it would have been to yours - a far truer development of what MBV set in motion than any number of black-jacketed, detuned droners have ever managed. An impeccable argument for reflection, for living,, with distant foghorn chorales set against the horn players, who really come into focus here with some very controlled free improvising, Campbell especially impressive in muted Milesian mood. It's as if the song is inseparable from the improvising - and when was the last time this fusion was performed so effortlessly? Laughing Stock, perhaps? Not forgetting Gillian Welch. After that there's nothing left to say except goodbye, which Kaplan does in a brief reading of Alex Chilton's "Take Care" ("not to hurt yourself"), with the compassion which is only made possible by the foreknowledge of noise, hurt, pain and death. When you've come out the other end. I haven't quite done that yet. How am I doing, do you think? Badly? As well as expected? As well as you would have expected, I hope...because yours remains the only opinion I can really trust, even 20 months later. I don't know. All I know is that you would have loved this record, and you're not here to hear it. All I know is that I have known new people, or other people differently, in these 20 months. Many are kind and good. But not even the best of them have come close to you. Not that that should be their ambition; far from it. But then again, where are you, if not within me? You only exist now because I exist. And so I continue to write, to put words in your mouth, to talk to you regardless. Because when the time comes when we both cease to exist, this writing will still stand as evidence that once we did exist, we loved and were loved. Why else does anyone write? The Brontes linking hands as they walked around the table at Haworth. Those imperishably moving inscriptions of their initials on that table. The table you and I looked at and walked around so many times. It kept them going. And this website keeps both you and I going. Night night then, Lauralee. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE MC xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
PETULA CLARK SINGS TONY HATCH "Downtown" is the sister song, or the reverse side of the song coin, to the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now?" As sung by Petula Clark, it's an audibly desperate plea for you (or her?) to reconnect with the world, if not necessarily humanity. There's something slightly forced about the song's gradual build-up from a solitary piano, to mid-register brass, then backing vocals, and then the key change at 1:59 where Tony Fisher's lead trumpet suddenly elevates the song into a gaudy bazaar, slightly too over-emphatic to be euphoric. And Clark - and indeed the song's author, arranger and producer, Tony Hatch - is well aware that going out at night may not necessarily lead to salvation or rebirth. "Everything's waiting for you," she proclaims - but is it, and if it is, are you bold enough to claim it? "When you've got worries, all the noise and the hurry seems to help, I know" - help do what? Obliterate them? Certainly can't extinguish them. And more pointedly, in the second verse: "Don't hang around and let your problems surround you - there are movie shows downtown." So you are being invited to participate in or observe a facade. Note how the music momentarily dips before the chorus, as if to ponder the nature of reality - "How can you lose?" "Happy again." And finally, Clark proposes herself as the solution: "You may find somebody kind to help and understand you/Someone who is just like you and needs a gentle hand to guide them along." The whole song is an invitation to meditate on the real meaning of "society" and whether you are actually going to be any happier or wiser by the end of the night. The option of "you leave on your own, and you go home and you cry and you want to die" isn't denied, explicitly or implicitly. Listen to Fisher's muted trumpet braying which takes the song out - and then consider, seven years later, Dave Holdsworth's cadenza over the increasingly hostile trellises of the opening section of Mike Westbrook's Metropolis, which could be interpreted as a representation of what happens when the neon burns your soul into shards. "Downtown" was certainly the last chance Clark was prepared to give herself/Tony Hatch - although still immensely popular in the UK, her chart career had dried up somewhat in the early '60s, and had "Downtown" not hit, she had been quite prepared to abandon recording in the English language altogether and concentrate on her far more lucrative career in Europe, specifically in France, where she lived in some splendour. Although she had already been recording Hatch's songs for a year or so, these had not been at all noteworthy (early efforts like "Darling Cheri" and "Valentino" remain embarrassing listening). However, with "Downtown" the relationship suddenly clicked, and there followed a short but remarkable series of songs in which both Clark and Hatch explored the seeming emptiness of London life. "I Know A Place" imposes some Beat Boom guitars on the "Downtown" template (and follows logically from "Downtown"'s "maybe there are some little places you know that never close") and is chiefly remembered for introducing the phrase "a cellarful of noise" into the pop lexicon. More remarkable, though, is "Strangers And Lovers," a two-part mirror image song which indicates a very ambivalent attitude to London. In the first ballad section, Clark muses on the "strangers" who are "up from the country, down on the money" in a suspended animation of sonics which clearly must have influenced the Etienne of Sound Of Water. Then, after she has sinisterly intoned, "I hope this never happens to you" (shades of "I Can Never Go Home Anymore"?), the music suddenly accelerates into the same song delivered from the opposite perspective; a "Plastic Palace People"-style ironic commentary ("Up on a cloud, going downtown" with the appropriate musical quotation) which culminates in Clark's sneer "Such a happy future!" before the music pauses for breath/thought, and the voice returns to regretful sadness - "They never see the strangers." It is obviously the same couple, once innocent and now corrupted, and the orchestra finally settles on a harmonic question mark. You decide. Desperation was certainly never far from the Clark/Hatch outlook. In '60s pop there are few performances more harrowing than Clark's near-hysterical delivery of "You'd Better Come Home." Outdoing even Cilla Black's explosion in the final verse of "Love's Just A Broken Heart," this is the obverse of the amused perspective of the SOS Band's "Just Be Good To Me." "Baby come home to me," sobs Clark, before starting to scream (as the orchestra swells up beneath her) "You'd better come home to see the damage you've done...I WON'T SHARE MY LOVE WITH SOMEBODY NEW." Mary Wollstonecraft pleading at Gilbert Imray; an abnegation of the rights of woman. One fully expects to be confronted with a sofa bathed in blood draining from slashed wrists when (if?) one finally comes home. An emotional numbness which Clark and Hatch never really dared risk again. How much easier it was for the public to consume the simple sentimentality of Chaplin's "This Is My Song," Clark's only UK #1 during this period ("Downtown" hit #1 in the US, but here was kept off the top by the Beatles' "I Feel Fine"); a hugely reassuring record which had nothing to do with Tony Hatch or modernism of any kind, a song which could easily have been sung by the teenage Clark of the post-war Huggetts films, by the fireside with the cosy father figure of Jack Warner. And yet, almost like the log book of a manic depressive, the mood could swing back towards absolute euphoria. Consider "Gotta Tell The World," which absurdly was only ever a B-side, but which represents an unambiguous YES to the world and to life. "Rrrrrr-ring every bell in every steeple now!" commands Clark as the orchestra sings its hallelujah behind her before reaching a crescendo as she sings "I fell in love today" (note the timpani/bass trombone parallels in the arrangement). Like Coltrane's Ascension, the record starts at a peak of intensity where most other records end, and just keeps climbing higher and higher until Clark finally hollers "and form the top of the mountains I'll shout!" Of course you can always fall off the top of the mountain if you're not careful. After this, Jackie Trent came into Hatch's life, both personally (they married) and professionally (she more or less became Hatch's lyricist). Their opening foray, the equally euphoric "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love," introduces a recurring musical motif - the staccato "God Only Knows" rhythm which recurs in many of their songs, up to and including what must be their most profitable song, the theme from Neighbours - and it's a kick to hear Clark deciding not to rhyme "understanding" with "demanding" (the very English "a" of the latter). Thereafter, however, something of a rut sets in. Hatch clearly by now fancied himself as a British Bacharach, and coupled with Trent's rather ungainly and slightly pretentious lyrics, they set down the road of art songs. Even straightforward hits like "Colour My World" and "Have Another Dream On Me" are spoiled by their entirely superficial imposition of "psychedelic" effects - the fuzz guitar on the former, the tabla and sitar on the latter, both sounding tacked on. Moreover, there began to appear in the songs sententious, conservative homilies. The potentially interesting "Who Am I?," which if left to Hatch alone would have made a very punctumised sequel to "Downtown" ("I'm chasing rainbows in the rain/All the dreams that I believe in let me down"), cops out with an amused nod and an acknowledgement that Love Is All That Matters (Trent's lyric portentously concludes, "To question such good fortune, who am I?"). Worse is "The Other Man's Grass (Is Always Greener)," an objectionable lecture instructing the listener to know their place in the world and keep it ("Don't look around" yells Clark as the orchestra seems almost to hijack the song into an infinitely more tortured lament). The only thing worth salvaging from this era is the genuinely strange "Don't Sleep In The Subway," with its chorus which seems to have been parachuted in from the Smile sessions, and Clark's confirmation of her sometimes exasperated but, in the end, undying love for the Victor Meldrewesque Other (again old motifs recur: "You wander around on your own little cloud...It hurts when your ego is deflated"). Otherwise there were plenty of turgid ballads which aspired towards the authentic detached despair of Scott Walker's work of the time, but finally question nothing ("Conversations In The Wind," "Cranes Flying South"). The attempted sultriness of "Beautiful In The Rain" is nearer Minnie Mouse than Dinah Washington. "Look At Mine" is a clumsy attempt at C&W. "There Goes My Love, There Goes My Life," "Las Vegas" and the failed theme from "Goodbye Mr Chips" are sufficiently hammy and overegged to suggest frustrated would-be writers of musicals. Eventually Clark left Pye - and pretty much the charts - for opulent semi-retirement in France and the occasional musical (including a spell in Sunset Boulevard) and Hatch and Trent more or less drifted for awhile. In the '70s Hatch became better known as a proto-Simon Cowell hate figure on the judging panel of the TV talent show New Faces ("You're BLOODY USELESS!") before, pissed off with Labour's high taxation, he and Trent pissed off to Australia, composed the theme for Neighbours and continue to live very comfortably indeed. But listen again to Clark's 1965 rendition of Hatch's "Call Me." Although Chris Montez's version was the big hit, Clark, more than almost any other British female singer of the '60s, seems to exude a natural, unforced compassion in her performance. She had, after all, lived through the war. posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
ELEPHANT GUN The first question we have to ask ourselves is: why, on the sleeve of the new White Stripes LP Elephant, is the number 3 highlighted in red? We know that the red/white colour scheme is their brand definer, but why is such emphasis put on, of all numbers, 3? And the "E"s in the word "ELEPHANT" are similarly highlighted in red, in the form of a mirror-image "3." Is the significance of the red third number more directly relevant to the White Stripes' music than the unhappy hyperbole of "purity" which both artists and writers have decided to apply to them? There may be a clue in the opening lyric of the song "Ball And Biscuit": "It's quite possible that I'm your third man girl." Note the absence of a comma in that sentence, and the consequent inadvertent references to both Graham Greene and androgyny. But a more direct explanation could be discerned in the sleevenote itself, which begins, portentously, "This album is dedicated to, and is for, and about the death of the sweetheart." Note that the "heart" of the word "sweet" is the letter E. But there, sadly, is more to it than that. The sleevenote continues, "We mourn the sweetheart's loss in a disgusting world of opportunistic, lottery ticket holders caring about nothing that is long term, only the cheap thrill, the kick, the for the moment pleasure, the easy way out, the bragging rights and trophy holding." We are reminded that sometimes it is the biggest braggarts who complain of the "bragging rights and trophy holding" of others. If Jack and Meg White are so set against this, then why comply in the in-your-face publicity that will almost certainly ensure a number one placing for Elephant in today's album chart? Why not just let those discover it who are worthy of discovering it? The sleevenote eventually trails away into Cappuccino Kid territory. "Honesty in bloom, heart on sleeve, life ever exposed and safe" (the latter an oxymoron, surely?)..." Yes, that weary signifier "honesty," at this late stage. "Honesty" from a divorced couple who until this year were pretending to be brother and sister. Much, predictably, has been made of Purity, Passion and Power (three Ps which have been far more potentially lethal for post-war art than Larkin's dreaded trilogy of Pound, Picasso and Parker). The duo who entitled their second album De Stijl are certainly aware of this. So why comply? Certainly Elephant has already made several middle-aged music critics happy; being voted the 70th greatest album ever made in a recent NME poll before it had even been released (what a contrast to their previous list of 1985, of which Danny Kelly bemoaned the fact that, if the Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy had been released two weeks earlier, it would have been one of the greatest records of all time. At least for the next seven or eight years). On a sub-Marsalis tip, the sleeve proclaims - in red - "No computers were used during the writing, recording, mixing or mastering of this record." Just like Queen albums of old - "No synthesisers!" (get the West London cockiness of that exclamation mark). Much has been made of the fact that no item of recording equipment used in the making of Elephant was made after 1963. This is less of a dramatic sonic throwback than one would imagine. In fact, the recording quality here is that of a Rudy Van Gelder 1963 - drums crisp, guitars very discernibly struck. Remember also that 1963 was the year of, among other things, "Be My Baby," Mingus' Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, and Xenakis' Eonta - so the "purity" of "eight-track reel-to-reel" recording is something of a red herring. If anything, Elephant is a record which belongs in 1968 or 1972; comparisons like the Groundhogs' Split or Ten Years After's Cricklewood Green spring to mind. But why a red 3? Is the absence of a third man in the White Stripes' music crucial or critical? Usually the trio format has proved the most flexible and desirable for either jazz or rock - too much yin-and-yang in duos, with four or more things start getting crowded - but a guitar/drums duo can move in one of two different directions. With the absence of a bass, both instruments have a greater responsibility for maintaining and developing rhythm simultaneously, and of course can, if they so wish, move into freer, less restricted areas (cf. the Derek Bailey/Han Bennink duos). Alternatively, if there is no bass to anchor the music, it can come across as losing or lacking some power or punch - make do and mend. So, in terms of the White Stripes, pre-digital production is essential to make the music sound more densely populated than it actually is (Mingus did the same trick on Black Saint; he utilised his three saxophonists in a V-form shape in the studio, with the tenor forward and the alto and baritone slightly towards the middleground - the resulting overtones made it sound like a full five-piece sax section, but could allow the band as a whole to display the flexibility of a small combo if required; though of course some overdubbing was also applied). Jack White (as producer), together with engineer Liam Watson, certainly does not set his marker down at 1935 or 1955 (or even standard turn-on-a-dime 1963 pop productions); he knows that, in order to work, we have to feel a least a modicum of force in what he and Meg are playing. The drumming is splendidly recorded; and one has to admit that Meg White is the newest in a distinguished line of deadpan but deadly efficient rock drummers (after Honey Lantree, Ringo Starr, Jet Black and Lindy Morrison). The snare/bass interplay goes off like a depth charge throughout. But how is the actual music? One wishes, as tends to be the case, that the Stripes would downplay the finally irrelevant concept of "purity" (i.e. not Britney Spears) - for Elephant is a record which can only exist in relation to 2003. Even the ploy of sending out promo copies in double vinyl format acknowledges nowness; Jack White claims that he only wanted journalists who had a record player to review it, to recapture the magic of getting up, turning the record over, etc. There are several immediate problems with this ingenuous proposal; firstly, the real reason for sending out vinyl promos was to avoid internet piracy and a consequent non-number one album chart placing. So much for "Sympathy for the Record Industry." Secondly, the act of presenting the music, on vinyl, as a double album is in itself contrived; already Gavin Martin at Uncut has fallen for the bait and become all misty-eyed about the Great Lineage of Rock Double Albums Blonde Exile Calling On Main London Street - but the fact is that the total playing time of Elephant comes in at just under 50 minutes; in other words, it could easily have fitted onto one vinyl album (cf. the equally contrived "Side A" - with the A in red - motif which appears on the sleeve of the CD version). Thirdly, if they are so concerned about "purity" and "honesty," then why not put their royalties where their mouth is and release the album on vinyl only? One suspects that XL Records - the label which a dozen years ago were issuing unrepentantly futuristic records by the likes of T99 and Quadrophonia - would not have given them whatever advance they did give them had they gone down this route. And, inevitably, the inherently tainted nature of "purity" impinges upon the music. "Seven Nation Army," the opening track and lead single, has an ever-so-slightly out-of-synch metal riff which sounds great on daytime radio, but somewhat less so on the hi-fi - Black Sabbath with the bottom (or the Butler?) missing. "I'm gonna fight 'em off/A seven nation army couldn't hold me back" which doesn't have any great relevance to The War but couldn't have existed without the foreknowledge of Public Enemy's Nation Of Millions. "Black Math" alternates unsatisfactorily between an epileptic two-step HM motif and slower "testifying" with Jack's voice sounding like a not especially desirable cross between Robert Plant and Jeff Buckley. Certainly Jack's vocalese is much more mannered than the straightforward post-Frank Black contralto whine of White Blood Cells- it's the Roger Daltrey disease of actually Trying To Sing Properly. "There's No Home For You Here" could almost be Queen, particularly its "Bohemian Rhapsody"-style multitracked chorus in the middle. And his rendition of "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself" is merely silly, as well as cruelly exposing his vocal limitations. Meg takes over for the vocal on "In The Cold, Cold Night" (amusingly, the sleeve features, behind these lyrics, an archive shot of Cole Porter in pith helmet, grinning and lying in his grave (or a bath, or a horse trough). This is fairly atmospheric and moderately sensual, but finally jejeune when set next to anything on the new Cat Power record. "I Want To Be The Boy To Warm Your Mother's Heart" subsitutes Spectorish echoing piano for guitar to some effect. The most touching song here, though, is also the slowest and quietest: "You've Got Her In Your Pocket," the languid drift of which suggests a very profitable route for the Stripes to take, a despairing meditation on the futility of possessiveness whispered as a warning. One suspects, however, that they will be tempted/pressurised to follow the route of the aforementioned "Ball And Biscuit," an interminable and studium-filled variation on "Voodoo Chile" which also paraphrases Blind Willie Johnson, but completely misses the duende of the former and the quiet desperation of the latter (and this track also shows up Meg White's limitations; perhaps Jack should have got in Susie Ibarra on drums instead). Thereafter we are mostly back in the familiar territory of White Blood Cells, and ominously these concluding songs work better than the preceding contrived attempts to break out of their formula. "The Hardest Button To Button" is propulsive rock, if that's what you like - though this writer often, and increasingly, feels that he would rather listen to the unforced mellow profundity of Lee Konitz or Paul Bley than any "rawk." Mort Crim's Twilight Zone-style spoken introduction sits ill with the very Thatcherite sentiments of "Little Acorns" ("The problems in hand/Are lighter than at heart...Be like the squirrel, girl/Give it a whirl" etc. - tell that to the citizens of Basra or Baghdad). Still, I have to confess that "Hypnotize" is a very effective and purposeful song (even though it's about stalking a girl - "If I may be so bold" indeed!). "The Air Near My Fingers" is worthy of the Stones, if the Stones are whom you dig; "Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine" suggests potential freeform waiting to burst out of its trad rock confirnes; and "Well It's True That We Love One Another," with its "I love Jack White like a little brother" drop-ins from one "Holly Golightly," confirms that nothing is more contrived than not being contrived. Throughout the whole album, I kept thinking of another recent example of a record made on antique technology with "real" instruments by a female/male duo of indeterminate relationship. But note my gender order reversal - for I am thinking of Gillian Welch's Time (The Revelator), a record which managed to do everything the Stripes try to do, but without any of the hype or specious moral grandstanding, and which also managed to be the most avant-garde record of its year, and perhaps of this century to date. For a different take on rock dualism, you might wish to investigate Wonderful Rainbow, the new, and apparently the most accessible, record from Lightning Bolt. This bass/drums/vocal duo comes across rather like the Stripes stripped of all their pop, which may be no good thing or no bad thing. The bass, through use of overtones, feedback and perhaps some studio trickery, manages to provide all the necessary functions of free-rock-metal guitar (the Boredoms meet Slayer, say Rough Trade), while the drums are restless and free-standing but always managing to nail the rhythm when required. Vocals are mixed so far back as to become indeterminate, and the scraps of lyrics barely legible on the sleeve suggest standard post-9/11 angst ("All the world's in flames/And we just play the game/It's all the same to you" etc.). But the music is purposeful and powerful; never more so than on the linked settlements of "2 Towers" and "On Fire" which suggest the barely suppressed hysteria of Sonny Sharrock on Pharaoh Sanders' Tauhid; grandiose motifs set against hypermanic harmolodic noise. There is one oasis of reflection in the very brief title track, which unexpectedly conjures up early Durutti Column; but even this respite is quickly subsumed into the terrible grandeur of the climactic "30,000 Monkies" whose cyclical guitar riffs, set against 16/8 drumming and endless, increasingly desperate crescendi, suggest a shotgun marriage between Ornette Coleman's "Rock The Clock" and Rush's "Spirit Of Radio." The concluding "Duel In The Deep" is as wracked and floundering as Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones stalking/killing each other at the climax of Duel In The Sun and crackles and screams its way out of a remarkable record. But, as with the White Stripes, can they go anywhere else after this? posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
WAS (NOT WAS) We first heard them on the 1980 12" single on Ze Records, "Wheel Me Out" (later made more widely available on 1981's Mutant Disco compilation, which I am pleased to say is due for imminent reissue as an upgraded 2CD 25-track compilation). Even then it was evident that David Weiss and Don Fagenson were a potential Lieber and Stoller for the post-post-atomic age. Upon the never quite settled groove were placed wildly disparate elements, all indicating a sort of benign psychosis: Liz Weiss, David's mother, sounding uncannily like Carla Bley, interacting with Weiss' own frantic yells ("You did it to him! And I'm next!"), the trumpet of Marcus Belgrave, occasional member of Mingus' larger ensembles (Mingus Revisited, Let My Children Hear Music) and future Mercury Rev collaborator, and the guitar of ex-MC5er Wayne Kramer. Unlike the test-tube experiments of Laswell's Material, this seemed entirely natural in its anti-naturalness - the elements of Leiber and Stoller's art songs like "Is That All There Is" (updated a year earlier on Ze Records by Cristina) dissembled and reconstituted as a template for pre-nuclear paranoia. They both came from Detroit; Weiss' parents were both entertainers, Fagenson's worked in school, his mother as a teacher and his father as a counsellor. Friends since high school, they began to make comedy tapes for their own pleasure which betrayed the influences of the Firesign Theatre, Zappa, Monk and Coltrane, as well as the obvious Detroit influences of Motown, the Stooges and the MC5. Various other endeavours included their own newspaper - the "Daily Bot" - and involvement with John Sinclair's White Panthers. Eventually Fagenson became a jobbing session musician, and Weiss jazz critic for the LA Herald Examiner. The two remained in touch, however, and when Fagenson's musical career was in danger of disappearing down the plughole - finances being so bad that he was apparently ready to rob a dry cleaners - Weiss returned to Detroit to stop this happening, and together they formed Was (Not Was) in 1980. Numerous explanations have been toted for the significance of the group's name, but in fact it was inspired by Fagenson's young son who was in the habit of identifying opposites as "Not" (proto-Wayne's World), e.g. "blue - not blue." The inadvertent philosophical tenets of such a name would of course play a great part in their early impact, not to mention their extreme reluctance to allow photographs of themselves to appear on their record sleeves or in the press. The two main vocalists were Sweet Pea Atkinson, a car factory worker who had lately been shot by a blind bookmaker for whom he was supposed to be the bodyguard; and former O'Jay "Sir" Harry Bowens. Their first, eponymously-titled - and by several continental leagues their best - album was released on Ze in June 1981. The cover was certainly in keeping with David Byrne-esque neuroticism; blood-red with the title WAS (NOT WAS) in black lettering across the top, overlying a photograph of a mass of suburban houses - all little boxes, all made abstract and forbidding. For the album the line-up was fleshed out by several Parliament/Funkadelic veterans, as well as Kramer, Belgrave and saxophonist David McMurray (never to be confused with David Murray). Paul Morley in the NME ecstatically hailed it as pop's answer to Bley's Escalator Over The Hill, which it certainly resembled in several key aspects; the disparate collection of musicians, the distended, never quite tactile xeroxes of pop, the underlying apocalyptic nervousness. The record begins with the first version of their signature tune "Out Come The Freaks" which would appear in different formats on each subsequent album. This first version is driven, demonic pop-funk with odd backward percussive flashes. In it Bowens sings of an assortment of defeated characters such as would have been worthy of Henry Mayhew; the Vietnam veteran, Suzanne who "eats her breakfast from a pan" and would be quite happy to marry for money ("She don't even care if he ain't got no hair/She says: "long as he signs the cheques/I figure what the heck? I'll get him a toupee"), and the "chick from Ecuador" lately having undergone ECT ("Part of me is lost for good/Do you understand?/"I do" says Michael as he grabs her hand"). The sanctuary of shared pain. As a whole, the record is as bleak, lyrically, as anything coming out of Manchester at the time, despite the brightly-coloured funk facade. "Where Did Your Heart Go?" is a stunning ballad - Atkinson's vocal sounding uncannily like Engelbert Humperdinck waking up in one of Derrida's mazes - and disgracefully had to wait until George Michael's end-of-the-party cover in 1986 to become a hit. Again, the pain of poverty is reiterated ("Come round sometime/We'll eat a rusty can of corn/And listen to the radio/I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, it says"). The song ends with the singer committing suicide ("And rock and roll can't teach me/What the river said that night/I jumped into its beauty/And drifted out of sight"). We then move into the Clinton-absorbed-into-a-Rorschach-black-hole neurofunk of "Tell Me That I'm Dreaming," with its samples of the then newly-elected President Reagan ("Can we who man the ship of state deny it is somewhat out of control?....Can...we...deny...control?") set against a Third Man character angle of a lyric ("One man liked milk/Now he owns a million cows") before Kramer's agitated guitar and McMurray's harmolodic saxes combine to usher in an apocalpytic finale. Reagan's voice in a loop ("It is somewhat out of control") set against, eerily, a descending Eastern string (synth) refrain, and, just like the finale of Escalator, voices "closer than the ear can hear." Weiss takes over vocals for "Oh! Mr Friction," and while his Fred Schneider-ish delivery is slightly too I'm-mad-me for the general tenor of the album, hear how the anti-funk of the rhythm works against the placid lament of the horn's half-tempo lament (very like Ornette's "Lonely Woman") with Belgrave's trumpet eventually having a nervous breakdown. "Carry Me Back To Old Morocco" should have been a dancefloor smash and a number one, and why it wasn't released as a single I'll never know. It more or less invents Prince with its nagging bubblegum refrain, its terrific guitar-driven beat (though note the synthesiser nods to the Ultravox of "Passing Strangers" and "Sleepwalk") and its endlessly suggestive lyric - also how the whole thing breaks down into askew semi-freeform fragments (complete with breaking glass) at the end. "It's An Attack!" is where Atkinson joyfully welcomes World War II ("Gather all your kitchen knives!") - both satirising nuclear paranoia and foreseeing, well, what's happening now. Another fantastic dance track with its deliciously insolent lift from Orbison's "Oh Pretty Woman." The track suddenly turns a corner and we are in the Mingusian urban landscape of "The Sky's Ablaze," wherein Weiss recalls his father ranting at him "The sky's ablaze with ladies' legs, they're kicking through the clouds" over a slowed-down bebop riff and traffic noises. This lies somewhere between Anthony Braxton's Paris field recordings of '68, released on his 1969 BYG album This Time, and the musings before the frog storm in Magnolia. The record ends with another Clintonesque funk/rockout "Go! Now!" where the cast board a balloon and wave goodbye to us/the world/civilisation. In 1982 the then ailing Ze gave the band a transfer to Geffen, and without Ze they never really recaptured the same blend of mischief and experiment. A second album, Born To Laugh At Tornadoes was recorded, but Geffen were unhappy with the results and the album did not appear until the end of 1983. Although it contains some individually strong tracks - most notably, one of Mel Torme's finest vocal performances (because done entirely straight-faced) on the barbed ballad "Zaz Turned Blue" - the record already betrays some elements of compromise. A pre-rehabilitation Ozzy Osbourne contributes a rap to "Shake Your Head (Let's Go To Bed)" - incredibly, the original version featured a pre-fame Madonna but was rejected by Fagenson as he thought no one outside of New York would ever hear of her (A further recording, with Osbourne and a then-unknown Kim Basinger on vocals, was eventually remixed by Steve Hurley and became their biggest UK hit single - #4 in 1992)! "(Return To The Valley Of) Out Come The Freaks" restyled as an overly knowing soul ballad pastiche almost gave them a Top 40 hit in 1984. A third album, Lost In Prehistoric Detroit, was rejected by Geffen, who also wanted them to get rid of Bowens and Atkinson and employ white vocalists. It was during this painful period that Don Was started to turn to producing records for others. Eventually Geffen flogged the band to Phonogram at a knockdown price, and ironically it was with Phonogram that they enjoyed their greatest commercial success with the What Up, Dog? album and its attendant hits, "Walk The Dinosaur" and "Spy In The House Of Love." But musically the record was dull, standard mid-'80s yuppie "funk," its clear highlights being "Somewhere In America There's A Street Named After My Dad" (rescued from the aborted third album) with a very touching vocal from Frank Sinatra Jr., and the Dadaist cut-ups of "Hello Dad, I'm In Jail." There was one further studio album, 1990's Are You Okay?, but this was a Don Was album in all but name, David absent from most of the sessions, claiming that the production had been "Paula Abdulised" (as Don's wife was Abdul's A&R woman, this was perhaps not the wisest of remarks to make). "I Feel Better Than James Brown" demonstrates dementia with diminishing returns (Pop Will Eat Itself's "Not Now, James, We're Busy" from the previous year was much sharper), but there's a nicely self-mocking vocal from Leonard Cohen on "Elvis' Rolls Royce." A further album, Boo!, was recorded in 1992 but never released as Don felt it was more of the same. The two inevitably fell out and the band quietly ceased to exist. Since then Don Was has continued his highly profitable and entirely anonymous production career, while David has concentrated on soundtracks. Perhaps they should have done that back in 1983. posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
THE SUN'S SHINING! WHICH ONE'S JUNIOR? WHICH ONE'S SENIOR? WHO CARES? It is the occasional privilege of the freelance worker that s/he can, if s/he so wants, or can afford it, simply not work for occasional periods, and instead enjoy the world a little more. So for the greater proportion of the week just gone, this is what I have been doing; enjoying and breathing music in the open air, and not feeling so great a need to write about it. Life has the capacity to get better still, of course, but that should not blind one to the truth that, given the correct circumstances, the simple indulgence in, and love of, life is both welcome and necessary. So what do I think about d-d-don't don't stop the beat, the debut album by the Danish duo Junior Senior? It is a great summer album, to get the obvious out of the way - but then why turn your nose up at the obvious? Sometimes the obvious is obviously needed. It's also not quite what you would expect from the top three single "Move Your Feet" which admirably and artfully treads the tightrope to stay on the Chic/Daft Punk side of things when it could easily have fallen into the DJ Otzi safety net (holes specially customised). Note the triple assonance of the album title; the 1-2-3 signifier is of the highest importance in this record, possibly more so than on any pop record since Gloria Estefan's "1-2-3," on a par with Ted Rogers' 3-2-1 - the supreme inadvertent adoption of Foucaultian techniques on primetime TV. That triple percussive swing from the vocal chant into Chic heaven in "Move Your Feet" elevates the song into the divine. Ze Records are written all over the album, of course - even the inset cover shot, with the two boogieing away madly in a decrepit office/back room/squat, completely lost in music, Junior squatting on Senior's shoulders, waving his arms so violently that he is causing the ceiling plaster to crumble (sparks - or, more accurately, Sparks - fly across the picture). Musically there is not much overlap with Kid Creole, but aesthetically they are certainly in the same medium-sized park. There is probably even less overlap with any notions of "House" - this is an album such as the Trashmen or the Ventures would have made in a different, more benificent age; guitar-driven, with much more in common with the White Stripes than with Cassius (and at this early stage it's definitely getting far more plays than Elephant). The introductory track, "Go Junior, Go Senior" has an intentionally Super '70s synth intro (think Moroder's "Too Hot To Handle") and the general 1978 aura is heightened by the proclamation "We want to take you to outer space." The ghost of the Police is also invoked (listen to that descending "hu-man-race" in the second line) before breaking into an agreeable and punchy trot. Eventually choirs and harps intrude into the song and embrace it as Prince might have done. "Rhythm Bandits" with its introductory nod to "Surfin' Bird" is the Trashmen gone ska - an exhilarating ride. Then after "Move Your Feet" - whose real intent becomes far more apparent in this context than as a single - we get the irresistible "Chicks And Dicks" with its catch-all shout-outs ("Girls think I'm hard but I think they're mad!...Hey gay, get out of my way! Hey straight, you're always too late") which builds up again and again from its foundation handclaps to a determinedly shambolic rock-out, complete with the most out-of-tune harmonica playing since Shepp's "Blase," before a sudden stately string line enters the song and drags it to a yet higher dimension. The comparison point of Disco Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes has been made by several commentators. This record doesn't yet qualify for retro-ironic playlisting on Resonance FM, but it should be played there anyway. "Shake Your Coconuts" (another Kid Creole nod?) marries Stones riffing to B52s attitude and still manages to achieve the crucial laidback element. "Boy Meets Girl," my favourite track, is the closest Junior Senior get to Prince (think "Glam Slam" or indeed "Girls And Boys"), its cymbal-heavy drumbeat colliding with the psychedelic sitar. "C'mon" has a terrific surf guitar riff which somehow manages to mutate into "Mony Mony" and eventually Jim Morrison (the closing "Come on"s) - note the inspired lyric "I want to do you/And do you no harm." "Shake Me Baby" is a brilliant Monkees-style gallop of a teen ballad whose sly nods to Blood On The Tracks make it better than the collected works of Dylan. Profundity in bubblegum, as ever. "Dynamite" is another infectious Kim Fowley rush, though with lyrics like "Bombs! We've got bombs!" it might be an unwise choice for a follow-up single. Finally we have "White Trash" with its synthesised feedback which manages to out-Stripe the Stripes - "We wanna be like Nancy and Lee/We wanna sing like Kim and Mar-VIN/We wanna wear the same as Sonny and Cher/Show we've got balls like the NEW! YORK! DOLLS!" though, as with all great pop, uncertainty is always just perceptible - "Understand this: I understand nothing" (Sartre!). Eventually everything is overwhelmed by feedback and Junior Senior send the record into loop ("Go Junior! Go Senior!" etc.). A song-cycle every bit as purposeful and pointed as What's Going On. And, more than just incidentally, a terrific drunken party record. Comparisons? One which might be useful would be with the still eminently listenable, if ludicrous, second album by my favourite Midlands grebos, Pop Will Eat Itself - This Is The Day, This Is The Hour, This Is This (1989). Released on the same day as the debut Stone Roses album, and played considerably more than the latter around these parts, it succeeds because it falls so short of the musical fusion it tries to achieve that it inadvertently creates something new. It's a record which could only have been made in 1989, of course; all these Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Spinderella references; the Osmonds/Lipps Inc sampling of the bleedin' obvious; the sci-fi schtick. And yet it's such fun to listen to - certainly more so than the more self-conscious We Are History of the likes of the Age of Chance. But of course the punctum is that, balanced against the gleeful naffness of "Def Con One" and "Wise Up Sucker" (both bearing killer riffs) and the definitive demolition of lazy JB sampling set against the man's then squalid reality ("Not Now James, We're Busy") are the considerably darker songs such as "Inject Me" which, ironically given its lyric of "I'm in a blur but I just can't feel my way," looks forward to the distended, dazed recent work of Blur, or indeed "The Fuses Have Been Lit" which quite startlingly predicts recent Massive Attack ("I got a little blue tube to give my views of a world in discord. My mind's unmoved") as well as the final drunken stupor towards oblivion of "Wake Up! Time To Die" ("I'm mumbling to myself/I'm stumbling for the top shelf...got to decontaminate before it's too late"). Or indeed, the KLF/JAMMs of 1987: What The Fuck's Going On - two middle-aged Scotsmen trying to make a new sense/nuisance of the world. More about the latter on CoM soon. posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
LOST HORIZONS: THE SHANGRI-LAS Strange how the marketed images of artists tend to be the polar opposite of their actualities. Consider on one hand the Ronettes, straight out of Hell’s Kitchen but exalted and elevated into princesses by Spector’s Wall; and on the other, consider the Shangri-Las, out of well-to-do Forest Hills but marketed by Shadow Morton and George Goldner as wild girls plucked from the gutter who tell their parents to go screw themselves and race off with a boy – and it’s always a boy, never a man – usually on a motorcycle, usually called Jimmy (Dean, of course – the ideally dead ideal). What’s unambiguous, though, is that their brief (two-year) run of hit singles is perhaps the bleakest sequence of pop singles outside of late-period Joe Meek, or the Specials. Like David Cassidy a decade later, being happy was a disadvantage; tragedy and uncertainty had to play a part in their art. Returning again to the Ronettes; on “Walkin’ In The Rain,” the singer is alone but looking forward to finding someone who will feel as she does. It’s an optimistic record, and Spector frames the optimism by letting the heavens burst. The epic drums and cloudburst effects combine to form a kind of grandiose rainbow for Ronnie to wander through, eventually to find salvation at the other end. Contrast that with “Remember (Walkin’ In The Sand),” one of the most troubled songs ever to make the top five. Apparently edited down from a seven-minute-long demo, the song starts in standard girl group ballad form – her man went to sea two years ago, and has inevitably found another. Learning this news, lead singer Mary Weiss’ shock is memorably captured in her confused, rapid-fire “let me think, let me think,” trying not to be instantly overwhelmed by grief, before settling back into “What can I do?” Then the sudden awful realisation: “Oh no. Oh no. Oh NO NO NO NO NO.” Then the song suddenly changes gear; into a mid-tempo, finger-snapping, minimalist chant: “Remember!” (“Fever” gone Gregorian) while Weiss whispers and murmurs and mumbles in the foreground, trying to reassemble the now fading memories in her mind: “Softly, softly, we’d meet with our lips” – a hint of the carnal before returning to the verse structure. Now Weiss wails “the life I gave to you – what will I do with it now?” before abruptly returning to the chorus. Her murmurs become progressively less distinct, more disjointed; her memories disassembling themselves. In the end, she, and the song, peter out, like the tide ebbing out to a horizon already lost. The bird sound-effects feel as artificial as those which Bernard Herrmann constructed for Hitchcock. An artificially induced memory. Do you even know who you are? Blank out the pain. “Leader Of The Pack” remains of course their best-known song; the 15-year-old Billy Joel’s piano chords resounding like a judge’s gavel. Perhaps too well-known to withstand further deconstruction, it nevertheless gives us the template for the Shangri-Las at their best (i.e. at their most defeated) – few other canons within pop put so much emphasis on Larkin’s “they fuck you up, your mum and dad” meme. Parents only ever fuck their kids up on Shangri-Las records; they stand in the way of relationships, always spell death. And so it is here, with the real-life motorbike in the studio, with the sudden switch from Weiss’ mumbled spoken intro to her sudden explosion of “I met him at the candy store!” – and also the liturgical fadeout: “the Leader of the Pack – now he’s gone” while the screeching brakes go into a loop, rather like the Jesus and Mary Chain’s unceasing feedback. This is not to say that the Shangri-Las were incapable of happiness. On the contrary, when they did express joy and wonder, the elation seemed incautiously elated; the other extreme of manic depression. So it is on “Give Him A Great Big Kiss” wherein Weiss spells out her ideal “boy.” He doesn’t appear to be anyone else’s ideal – “big wavy hair, a little too long,” “dirty fingernails – a boy with pride! “ “He’s always looking like he doesn’t lose.” Best of all is the hilarious talking middle section, where Weiss exclaims, “He’s “good” bad, but he’s not evil” (the others respond, “tell me more, tell me more” in an uncanny prophecy of “Summer Nights” from Grease). But, needless to say, the ideal can rarely translate into reality. In the mournful “Back On The Streets,” Weiss – whose quavering voice always sounded on the verge of weeping – reflects on the impossibility of turning that ideal into a mirror image of herself, the futility of trying to domesticate him, because doing so surgically removes all the danger and sex which initially attracted her. So she has to “set him free” because it’s the only way he can turn her on – as an unattainable outsider. Even in a song like “The Boy,” Weiss observes that he is “looking old,” and although she sings that she “used to walk the streets at night,” “loneliness is a part of my past – a million tears ago,” she doesn’t exactly sound overwhelmed with joy. “Give Us Your Blessings” is lyrically a rerun of “Leader Of The Pack,” except here both Mary and “Jimmy” take off on the motorbike, apparently so overcome with misery that their “folks” have failed to sanction their imminent union that they fail to notice “the sign that says DETOUR.” On this song there are no melodramatic sound-effects; simply a matter-of-fact final verse where the parents discover the two corpses and, presumably, grieve. The use of space in the production and the refrain of “run, run, run” manages to foresee both Brian Wilson’s later adventures, and the Velvet Underground. In contrast, “The Train From Kansas City” considers a different kind of living death. Mary is engaged to be wed but receives a letter from an old flame. She doesn’t do the simple thing and write him back but lets him come (oh yes). She assures her current intended that he needn’t worry – “we will never part,” but she sings it through clearly clenched teeth. The steam whistles through a “Ghost Town.” High Noon (or, strictly speaking, ten past two) arrives like the sword of Damocles. Of course she still wants him, and the subtext is that she will go straight back to him. But will we know? The ending is left as open as that whistle. “Never Again” is an emotional avalanche of almost Spectorian standards. Betrayed, Weiss screams that this is the end (“you’ve had your last chance”), as the drums and backing vocals are mixed higher and higher with every verse, Hal Blaine’s percussion a metaphorical axe crashing down on the adulterer’s head. They did try different things. “Right Now And Not Later” is a demand for commitment from the Other set to a brisk and propulsive groove – a Northern Soul floorfiller waiting to be discovered. “I’m Blue” is their exceptionally singular and askew take on R&B; hear Weiss’ stuttering chorus of “gone gone go-go-go-go-gone-gone” and hear especially the bizarre Sun Ra chordal clusters coming from the organ behind her (also note the second verse lyric: “Every night about two, my love for you comes tumbling down,” oh yes). “Sophisticated Boom Boom” is a forlorn attempt at starting a new dance craze, notable chiefly for Weiss’ vocal trumpet imitation in the instrumental break (“that’s not cool!” exclaims another Shangri-La directly afterwards). “Heaven Only Knows” and “What’s A Girl Supposed To Do” are very good, straight Spector homages (though “The Dum Dum Ditty” is “Da Doo Ron Ron” unabashedly mixed with “He’s A Rebel”). “Long Live Our Love” is a rather hamfisted bring-the-boys-back homage to Vietnam (and musically oddly anticipates Olivia Newton-John’s doomed ’74 Eurovision entry “Long Live Love”) – but listen to the anticipatorily mournful paraphrasing of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” which sounds as though Johnny’s funeral has already taken place. But most remarkable, and most sinister, of all was the string of discs which they recorded which stare death directly in the face. Firstly, “I Can Never Go Home Anymore,” one of the most overt studies of Oedipal fixation in pop, a devotional hymn to Mother. It starts briskly with a snarled “I’m gonna go and hide if she don’t leave me alone/I’m gonna run away” before Weiss shuts the uptempo music off with a sudden but soft “don’t.” She then goes on, in a faltering, half-singing voice (and, in contrast to the Ronettes’ assured technical vocal prowess, the Shangri-Las’ vocal incompetence kind of worked in their frail favour) to tell the tale of how she ran off with a boy (who, uniquely in Shangri-Las records, is clearly a McGuffin; by the second verse, she’s “forgot about him right away”) and condemned her mother to loneliness. Hear the stunning moment where she dreams an infant lullaby – which usually, in pop, spells doom; this is the direct ancestor of the murdered mother in the Coup’s “Me And Jesus The Pimp In A ’79 Granada Last Night” – before concluding tearfully that her mother “got so lonely, the angels picked her for a friend.” In other words, she committed suicide. Even in the increasingly nihilistic year of 1966 (“Paint It, Black,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Who Are The Brain Police”) this was strong stuff, and yet still managed #6 in the US charts. She has condemned her own mother, her only true lover, to death, and can consequently never go home anymore. Forget kitsch, forget camp, go straight to Susan Sontag and see the quivering fear within. “He Cried,” a gender-reversed cover of an old Jay and the Americans hit, repeats the title motif over and over as the ramifications of the break-up make themselves increasingly known musically. And then there was their final hit – a mere #59 on Billboard, too strong even for 1966 tastes – the extraordinary double-sided “Past, Present And Future” and “Dressed In Black.” Especially the latter. Here the Other walks around morbidly, hardly noticing Weiss’ existence. They’ve been told they can never be, for whatever reason (too old? too young?). He keeps on walking. There’s a moment of doomed defiance as Weiss suddenly raises her voice and shouts, “I don’t care what anyone thinks! This love I have is growing stronger and stronger! (an indirect paraphrasing of Sinatra’s exquisitely resigned closer to In The Wee Small Hours, “This Love Of Mine”)” before realising that in fact he has gone, never to return. The refrain of “so soft, so warm,” initially hopeful, now starts to recede. Thus the scene is set for the bleakest, most desolate end to any pop record. The accompaniment is pared down to castanets, percussion and double bass, quieter and quieter while the never more chilling voice of Mary Weiss recites her own epitaph: “I climb the stairs. I shut the door. I turn the lock. Alone once more. And no one can hear me cry. no one.” And you know she will never come out of that room again. Not unless carried out in a coffin. So to “Past, Present And Future,” the Shangri-Las’ own epitaph to themselves and the death of youth, of joy, of life. Over a barely concealed “Moonlight Sonata,” the song is recited, not sung. Look at the past. “Was I ever in love? There were moments when…well, there were moments when.” Consider the present, the squalid options open to her. “Go out with you? Why not? Do I like to dance?” And then, colder and more lethal than an icepick: “Don’t try to touch me. FOR THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.” Before a brisk “shall we dance?” The orchestra briefly swells into a mockery of grandeur – compare the orchestra and chorus which swell for a few seconds at a time at strategic points in Herb Alpert’s 1969 reading of Nilsson’s “Without Her,” the real pain I cannot sing – before resigning itself back into stasis. “At the moment, it doesn’t look good. At the moment, it will never happen again.” And finally, in rhythmic tandem with the piano, straight out of Beckett: “I. Don’t. Think. It. Will. Ever. Happen. Again.” It’s a song about rape, of course. “At least, it felt like love.” But we need to consider long and hard that “there were moments when.” There were moments when he raped me. And who was the rapist? Is it who you think? Remember how their disgust at their parents has been highlighted throughout their records. Is this another “Her name was Cheryl…her father came to her at night. She was 12 years old” (Cat Power, “Names”) Is that why her folks are so uptight at her seeing, or marrying, or fucking boys? Does this song explain all the others? It was co-written by Jerry Leiber, and provides a useful bookend to Leiber and Stoller’s art song of three years later, “Is That All There Is,” Peggy Lee’s last big hit. Indeed the progenitor of the latter song could be amusedly ridiculing the adolescent hang-ups of the Shangri-Las oeuvre (“I know what you’re thinking…if that’s the way she feels, why doesn’t she end it all? Oh no, not me…I’m not ready for that final disappointment”), even though it’s a pretence at detached indifference to the bad cards life has dealt her; the Peggy Lee who sings “Is That All There Is” is a grown-up, but no more wise, Mary Weiss; still despairing, really, but continuing to exist by virtue of denying her despair. “She was in a sort of nervous state when I zid her last; and so thin and hollow-cheeked that ‘a do seem in a decline. Nobody will ever fall in love wi’ er any more,” said Izz absently. (Hardy, Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, chapter XL: 1891) “In the fire of his care his love in the high room, And the child not caring to whom he climbs his prayer Shall drown in a grief as deep as his true grave, And mark the dark eyed wave, through the eyes of sleep, Dragging him up the stairs to one who lies dead.” (Dylan Thomas, “The Conversation Of Prayer,” March 1945) posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
TAKING GLAM OUT OF THE JUNK SHOPBritish glam rock was the sort of movement which only could have happened in the midst of an energy crisis. It’s entirely logical. The resources had been vastly depleted by the psychedelic adventures of the ‘60s, where every last atom of sound and surprise had been thrown into even the most routine 7-incher, where every double-flange and Leslie cabinet distorted vocal could contain its own universe, where no orchestra was too big for the humblest quartet of garage mechanics from Salford. Even the less exalted records of the era, such as Odessey And Oracle, recorded in Abbey Road studio downtime for the 1968 equivalent of tuppence halfpenny, sound intrinsically epic in their fabric.Come the early ‘70s, however, when Heath urged us to “Save It!,” resources were running low and some sonic rationing had to take place. Thus, for instance, the adjustment of Tyrannosaurus Rex into the economy-sized T Rex. Symphonic sounds and priceless special effects did persist, but were only used by the wealthiest operatives, those groups with most space to squander with their self-imposed angst; the post-Barrett Floyd, the Moody Blues, Yes, ELP. They were loved astronomically but Economically They Were Setting A Bad Example and Furthermore Were Not Pop. When it came to singles, economising made itself indispensable. Out went the 90-piece orchestras and backwards tapes; in came less - basic guitar/drums/bass line-ups, make do and mend. It’s significant that much of glam harked back consciously to the ‘50s ideal of rock and roll; it was time to Fight The Flab and get Back To The Basics. Instead of cavernous, post-Spector echoes, there was a distinct dryness to early ‘70s Britpop; blunt, crisp, close-miked drumming, a deadening of echo with the exception of just one single, Gene Vincent-style effect – and even the latter was deployed to devastating effect by Mike Leander and Gary Glitter on their initial run of hits. Listening to “Rock & Roll Part 2” and discarding personal controversies, it’s noticeable how dehumanised this 1972 glam sound was. Leander and Glitter may have already been vaguely conscious of what Perry and Gibbs were concocting in Jamaican studios at the time; certainly this is dub in excelsis, the shouts, the exhortations, brutally edited, their wings clipped, just another rhythmic element in the sparsely-populated whole (also compare the equally brutal “soul” cut-ups in 1986-7 hip hop; Eric B similarly reducing Bobby Byrd’s “emotion” to a series of signifiers). As with Jeff Wayne’s similarly startling production template on David Essex’s “Rock On,” one is aware of how much is missing from the record, as if they ran out of funds before they could complete it; it’s the absences which make this music compelling (this fascination with the spatial also sprang to mind when listening to the new Mover album, of which more anon).Moreover, with the very singular exceptions of the frontrunners like Bolan, Bowie, Ferry/Eno – and the singular, because female, because American, exception of Suzi Quatro - most glammers were distinctly unsexy; the oft-repeated cliché of brickies dressing up, or more accurately long-serving veteran also-rans who slogged unsuccessfully throughout the ‘60s and suddenly saw their chance. Brian Connolly or Noddy Holder could never be thought of as sexy; those who consciously went for the androgyny angle – Dave Hill, Steve Priest – were demonstrably a comedy turn. Even Mick Ronson, when disengaged from Bowie’s embrace, was revealed as just another Jeff Beck disciple from Hull.Bearing all of this in mind, how best to approach a new compilation which has come my way entitled Velvet Tinmine – 20 Junk Shop Glam Ravers. The title immediately had me on my guard – is this going to be yet another dreary exercise in faux-irony, another I Love Never Mind The Top Ten Of Five Seconds Ago-style “OH GOD WHAT WERE WE THINKING NYAH HAHAH” sneer? Another Kenny Everett’s World’s Worst Record Album (in fact, one track is shared with both compilations, Tubthumper’s “Kick Out The Jams,” although the Everett compilation has a different and punchier mix of the track, complete with church bells, car crashes, which the recording on Velvet Tinmine slightly lacks)? Well, not quite. For a start, the album is at least part-compiled and annotated by Bob Stanley, a man I know to be of usually impeccable taste (and he contributes a typically fine, informative and comprehensive sleevenote). Does “Junk Shop Glam” exist as a genre or was it just made up? Certainly most of these 20 tracks could, over the years, have been yours for a few pence, following a careful inspection of local charity shops; de-glamourised glam, glam which, because of the sheer weight of singles being unleashed even 30 years ago, never got the chance to be glamorous because it never got heard – although I am old enough to remember many of these records being played on Radio Luxembourg and advertised in long-extinct journals such as Disc and Music Echo.The album begins with the track which was always the most likely of these to have become a proper hit – “Rebels Rule” by Edinburgh’s Iron Virgin. Deploying a “Can The Can” rhythm track and Connolly-esque vocals, this record is squarely and lyrically pitched at the level of schoolboy rebellion; much of this stuff was specifically aimed at 14-16 year olds (even though most of the artists were already twice their age). It also reminds me of the peculiarly symbiotic relationship which glam had with heavy rock. It’s arguable that the most important and influential band in relation to the British singles charts of the ‘70s was the one most conspicuous by their deliberate absence from these charts – Led Zeppelin. It only takes a tweak to change the Page/Plant thrust into chewable Chinnichap (which I intend as a compliment to both parties), and it’s equally relevant that in 1974, just as glam was starting to wane commercially, there emerged perhaps the biggest commercial success story from the entire movement – those late starters from Feltham, Queen (such a glam name!). The ghost of Brian Connolly never lurks far away from that of Freddie Mercury (“Killer Queen” – a Sweet single in all but name). Anyhow, Queen broke through but lots of others didn’t, including Iron Virgin, who promptly disappeared back to Edinburgh and the world of Proper Jobs.Hello did enjoy a brief spell of success in the glam autumn of ‘74/5 – and you can’t argue with the avant-Bo Diddley goes dub of “New York Groove” – but their 1973 single “Another School Day,” recorded when they were still 16, appears here, and sounds remarkably mature and punchy, with the oddly blank voice of Bob Bradbury its still centre. Again, though, note the references to “blue suede shoes.” It’s hard to shake off history (the apparent sonic extravagance of Roy Wood’s Wizzard epics were also rattled out on the turn of a dime), but the song’s worn better than “Toughen Up” by the Arrows, the latter’s follow-up to their solitary top ten hit “Touch Too Much” and a straightforward “Not Fade Away” cop which unsurprisingly failed to trouble the scorers (just as the Sweet’s contemporaneous attempt to grow hairs on their already over-hairy chests, “Turn It Down,” similarly stiffed just outside the top 40). Growing up in glam was a distinct disadvantage if you weren’t a smart operative like Bowie.The Slade influence is palpable in a couple of tracks; there’s former Gary Glitter support act Crunch with their “Gudbuy T’Jane” derived “Let’s Do It Again” in which one is instructed to “clap your hands and stamp your feet.” More astonishing, however, is “Kick Your Boots Off” by the utterly obscure (and very male) Sisters, which is nothing less than a glam march (though note yet more school references, and the hilariously endearing “We’re gonna go on forever/But we’re gonna keep it clean!”) – the exact midpoint between “Coz I Luv You” and “Vindaloo.” From one perspective, images are conjured up of Billy Dainty, or Bernie Clifton, or even the young Michael Barrymore, sauntering onstage in a dreary edition of Seaside Special. But, from another perspective, check also the atonal yodelling/guitar squalls which take over towards the fadeout and which seem to point squarely towards the ultimate realisation/detonation of avant-glam which was the first Earl Brutus album (discussed in detail on CoM last summer).Some things here are fairly palpable cash-in attempts, such as the unfortunate Brett Smiley – a protégé of Andrew Loog Oldham – whose Bowie-worshipping, solitary single “Va Va Va Voom” appears here. Now we are reaching the territory which Lawrence of Denim was subsequently to colonise; de-rocked guitars co-existing with squelching synths. Hear “Morning Bird” by the Damned (no, not that one) which, as the sleevenote readily admits, is essentially the riff to Geordie’s weird ’73 top tenner “All Because Of You” welded to a Chicory Tip backing track with odd Macca-esque vocals entering here and there. Or how about Fancy’s reading of “Wild Thing” – Helen Caunt’s Cadbury Drinking Chocolate breathy vocals are the only vaguely sexual element of an otherwise completely routine performance. Occasionally the music sags into glorified proto-AoR (Shakane’s “Love Machine,” Warwick’s “Let’s Get The Party Going” which would be guaranteed to put the kibosh on any party, even in 1975, and sounds like a prototype for the ghastly Smokie) or rather routine pub rock (Barry Blue, the future producer of Heatwave, slumming it in Big Wheel’s “Shake A Tail Part 1”) – although note the cheerfully apocalyptic lyrics of the musically benign “The Comets Are Coming” by the Washington Flyers, and compare with Ferry’s contemporaneous reading of “Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” with Mackay and Manzanera dive-bombing their agonies around his near-epileptic vocal. Much of this music is clearly a xerox of pop, rather than pop itself – which, of course, doesn’t necessarily make it a bad thing.Occasionally 14-16 year olds would be drafted in to make the records themselves, in the wake of the Jackson Five and the Osmonds. Good to see that both Simon Turner and Ricky Wilde are represented here, though sadly in both instances it’s with the wrong song. Turner, later Simon Fisher Turner of King of Luxembourg/Derek Jarman soundtracking fame, contributes the Jonathan King-written/produced “(Baby) I Gotta Go,” but his vocal is almost an understudy for that of King himself, and the production seems curiously unfinished – almost like a demo. Better, perhaps, to have included his peculiarly chilling reading of Bowie’s “Prettiest Star” or 1974’s astonishing “She Was Just A Young Girl,” the progenitor of which latter epic of doomed love ends up being run over by a train.Ricky Wilde appears here with “I Wanna Go To A Disco” – and yes, vocally he does sound remarkably like his sister would a few years later (although I swear I can hear Kim among the backing vocalists), and indeed one can already discern the elements which would culminate in masterpieces like “Chequered Love.” But “Teen Wave” is his great record; a frenetic rave-up with taped screams which more or less writes the blueprint for Andrew “69” WK, and let’s hope it turns up on a future volume.Flame were EMI’s latecomers; very late indeed, in the case of their 1977 single “Big Wheel Turning” which sounds fine in a post-Denim world, but, released as it was in the same month as “I Feel Love” and “Pretty Vacant,” must then have seemed horribly out of time and place. And we mustn’t disregard – as easy as it would be to do so – “Bay City Rollers We Love You” by the Tartan Horde, whose vocalist (even speeded up) is unmistakably Nick Lowe. Recorded as an apparently heartfelt tribute in 1975, with a picture sleeve including Rat Scabies in the line-up, their smiles are of course those of the eventual assassins – and Lowe’s production of the Damned’s “New Rose” some 18 months later was one of the main death blows. Another late entry comes from Bearded Lady, with their 1975 flop “Rock Star.” Johnny Waughman’s semi-sneered vocal looks at least sideways at punk (well, perhaps Eddie and the Hot Rods) but the lumpen rhythm and stodgy guitars both needed to go.That just leaves two singular oddities. Firstly, “Neo City” by the Plod, a band who never got past the demo stage and whose main claim to fame is that one of their number was the future Independent pop poet Martin Newell. Even as a demo, “Neo City” sounds far and away the most sophisticated thing here, a pleasingly askew exercise in proto-powerpop which stands up remarkably well and, if done by the Coral or the Music, would be instantly acclaimed a masterpiece.That just leaves the wild cards in the pack – Stavely Makepeace, aka Lieutenant Pigeon. It comes as no surprise that SM’s mainmen, Rob Woodward and Nigel Fletcher, were Joe Meek fanatics (indeed, “Mouldy Old Dough,” the only one of their 30+ singles which struck lucky commercially and an international chart-topper and multi-million seller in 1972, I have always considered a “had Joe Meek lived he would have produced this” record), and, much as “A Girl Like You” has done for Edwyn Collins, the success of “Mouldy Old Dough” seems to have allowed them the financial freedom to pursue their very singular take on home-made not-quite-pop, with Rob’s mother Hilda Woodward at one of two pianos in their front room. “Slippery Rock ‘70s” is the strangest and most avant-garde track here, and the title indicates a great degree of self-awareness which surely must have influenced Saint Etienne, even if only indirectly; a cheery piano refrain with weirdly high-pitched vocal/synth darts weaving in and out of the track almost randomly. “They deserve a definitive anthology and a hefty reappraisal” says Stanley, to which I add my amen – I want to hear more of this.And more of this music in general. This excellent compilation certainly isn’t a sneer of ridicule – it’s a serious attempt to re-evaluate a dark corner of music whose potential has barely begun to be sniffed at, and it’s as lovingly assembled as any good Northern Soul compilation (and there’s another, much longer, essay which someone will have to write – probably me in the fullness of time, as one who was there and participated – about the sonic and societal parallels between glam and Northern Soul). It’s about reclaiming our past to help construct a future. Which, as well you know, The Church Of Me tries to do on a regular basis. posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
STOP THIS SPIDER FROM CRAWLING And what if it’s yet another illusion? What if, every time you try to reconnect with the world, you are kicked in the face and knocked back into touch? You crawl back into your self-constructed shell, further and further on each occasion. Eventually you will become tired of coming out ever again, and like Buffy, faced with the option of “real life” in a mental institution and a “fantasy life” slaying vampires but with a sister she loves and friends she cares for – which one would any “rational” person choose? You blink out at the world, never really wanting to have anything to do with it again, but you can’t help but keep listening. Which way towards freedom? As a result, I have lately been listening to the music of introverts – some reluctant, others satisfied in their knowing isolation. Think of “Delicate Cutters,” still the defining song of Throwing Muses, Kristin Hersh stabbing you with her voice before she stabs herself; drums muffled but unmissable. Think of those quiet moments on Exile In Guyville - “Canary” or “Mesmerizing,” say – where Liz Phair comes nearest to a “truth.” Or the entirely apposite closing moments of Saturday’s final episode of the highly selective country music history programme Lost Highway which discovered salvation in Gillian Welch – and specifically in “Revelator” and “I Dream A Highway.” More than anything I have been listening to You Are Free, the new album by Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, and her first of original material since 1998’s Moon Pix. There was an album of cover versions in 2000, and on the new album there are two “covers” which both illuminate the songs around them and redefine the concept of redefinition. Marshall’s is one of the most distinctive female voices in contemporary music; what are the best benchmarks for comparison? Sinead O’Connor, perhaps; a vague element of the compassionate ballad-singing Dusty Springfield; possibly some Janis Ian. But none of these is especially satisfactory. Marshall never has the need to shout or snarl; the extremely careful yet tremulous middle range in which she stays can embrace, hug, the listener, in the same way as Gail Brand’s more contemplative trombone playing does. She frequently sounds on the verge of tears; she more frequently drives this listener to tears. Musically I think of the same compressed avantness with compassion which was characteristic of mid-period Raincoats – but again, that doesn’t really help. It’s a slightly more rough-hewn counterpart to Welch’s Time (The Revelator), but that doesn’t tell you a damn thing. The opening track “I Don’t Blame You” features Marshall on what sounds like the Langley Schools’ gymnasium piano, playing systematic, nursery-like block chords while she delivers an elegy to an unnamed guitarist who has quit (music? life?) because “they wanted to hear that sound/that you didn’t wanna play.” I’d guess there was an indirect aesthetic link to Joni’s Blue - which is where, let’s face it, all this music returns to in the end – but there’s no elation here; it’s like a post-mortem on one life while she entreats you to enter another. Thus the semi-title track “Free,” the nearest this album comes to an anthem, an urging to understand why anyone should play or listen to music – “Don’t be in love with the autograph/Just be in love when you love that song.” Guitars riff, and on several occasions the drums threaten to kick in, but never quite do – there’s a bass drum pulse halfway through which could be House in a different context – and easy pleasure is clearly not bought here. The sustained tension give the song its true dynamic. “Good Woman” is a reluctant goodbye song. She leaves because “I don’t want to be a bad woman/and I can’t stand to see you be a bad man.” Warren Ellis’ violin prowls the song like a razor ready to slash, while David Campbell’s string arrangement and a duopoly of backing vocals, one from a children’s choir (“Maggie & Emma” are the sleeve credits) and a deeper one from low-key guest star Eddie Vedder. The impression is one of a Carter Family singalong while the bulldozers and process servers move in on them. “Speak For Me” with Dave Grohl contributing both bass and drums, is the nearest the record comes to a rocker, but again the dynamic is thankfully far more Neu! than Nickelback (and the Neu! influence was, as has previously been noted, evident on the last Foo Fighters album). “Werewolf” is one of the record’s two covers (of a Michael Hurley song); distended harmonics sing over a probing string arrangement (again by David Campbell, with particularly good use of ‘cellos), Marshall drawing out sympathy for an unlikely recipient. “Fool” initiates what might be interpreted as a trilogy about the State of the Union, with Marshall singing about how “the USA is our daily bread/And no one is willing to share it…A direct hit of the senses/You’re disconnected…It’s not that it’s death/It’s just on the tip of your tongue/And you’re so silent/Wanting to live and laugh all the time/Sitting along with your tea and your crime…” Or perhaps, as with George Michael’s “You Have Been Loved,” it’s a benignly accusatory cuddle for someone who doesn’t need to feel like a victim. It also obliquely brings to mind the painful ending of Marvin Gaye’s “Just To Keep You Satisfied,” where Gaye sings (or weeps) “It’s too late to live and love and….ohhhhh.” “The war we have won, we’re winning again” sings Marshall at the song’s close. Then Grohl returns on drums for the next two tracks, “He War” (“I’m not that hot new chick/And if you want me to run with it/We’re onto your same old trick”) and the almost drum ‘n’ bass-like hissing, stuttering rhythm which powers "Shaking Paper,” with its unambiguous “Big shot gun with no guns/Big shot army with no army at all…Demons despise the sound of shaking paper.” Like the one Hans Blix is trying to shake? From then on, having realised that the world isn’t going to negotiate with her, Marshall slowly retreats back into a contemplative darkness, beginning with the good cop to Arthur Brown’s bad cop that is “Babydoll,” where she urges the song’s subject (“black is all you see”) to “turn out the light, set yourself on fire, say goodnight.” Rediscover carnality, and thereby life. And yet, such an ominously poignant piano line…which leads to another request for a redefinition of freedom, “Maybe Not,” a song which could easily be interpreted as a song to America, urging them to turn back from the brink: “A dream that I see/Don’t kill it, it’s free/You’re just a man (note that subtle paraphrasing of the punctum of Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man” – everyone accusing Wynette of being blandly yea-saying always forget the far-from-throwaway lyric “after all, he’s just a man”)…We can all be free/Maybe not with words/Maybe not with a look/But with your mind….Shake this land.” One final warning before the seer performs the remarkable feat of retreating into her shell, and simultaneously opening her soul up to the world. What happens if we don’t set ourselves free is brutally spelt out in the record’s devastating final moments. Firstly, “Names” – a quietly brutal postscript to Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died,” the song which Tori Amos has tried but failed to write these past dozen years, wherein Marshall, singing as though exhausting her body of the last sniff of oxygen, describes five childhood friends of hers who came to horrible ends. The kind of song which says more in its emotional straightforwardness than any number of cynical, overacted, ill-written BBC TV dramas. Because she is not lecturing you or shouting at you – “take a look at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. He’s not inventing them, he’s not interpreting them, he’s just painting them” – she’s just letting you know in the quietest, deepest, most hurting way that anyone can. After a brief interlude of respite, and the record’s last display of what could only distantly be described as assertiveness, in the song “Half Of You” (“When you give half of you/I want all of you”), we suddenly descend into another requiem for the world/the individual in the record’s second cover, an astonishing re-reading of John Lee Hooker’s “Crawlin’ Black Spider,” retitled “Keep On Runnin’.” Here is the song which should have been used as the theme for the film Spider; atop a simple and unbearably poignant guitar line – Peter Green could, should, have both played and sung this song – Marshall sings a threnody. “Baby settle down/You’re gonna lose your home…Just keep crawlin’ ‘til the day I die.” It’s the reverse of the fantasia of “I Dream A Highway” – what happens to you when the highway has no clear destination, back to no one. Again it’s a plea to you to be free (free from death? free from crawling? free from compromise? free from life?). The epilogue returns to the same block chord piano which supplied the prologue: “Evolution.” Marshall sounds as though she’s playing a reluctant Death March, and Vedder returns for some low-register harmony vocals, sounding uncannily like Stuart Staples of Tindersticks (think of the latter’s quietest and most shattering moments such as “Cherry Blossoms”). They sing their siren warning to the world like refugees from Powell and Pressburger’s The Edge Of The World - right in our ears but a million miles away, only because we let them be. A relaunching of Noah’s Ark to escape the imminent deluge – “Better call all the ships…better call the fishermen…better call the head nurse…better call with some resistance…better call on revolution/Better way to make a revolution/Better make your mind up quick.” A Biblical apocalypse, worthy of John Martin’s red and black paints. Breughel’s thundercloud on the verge of demolishing the Tower of Babel. And it’s all so quiet. Like a dream…but we have to choose whether to wake up and act, or to be lulled into an imagined utopia and stay there as the circle burns around us. An implorement to look towards the Northern light again, and then Eastwards to where it all began, and to celebrate what’s left of the world, what’s left of us, before it all goes West forever. Before the vision fades. Before the focus twists. posted by Marcello Carlin Permalink . . .
